Climbing media is full of stories about unbelievable places you’ll never climb at in your life. For most of us, places with exotic names like Railay, Chamonix, Kalymnos, and Patagonia are simply out of reach. This is why Lumpy Ridge is the best trad climbing in the United States.
So how does a kid from Colorado chase climbing dreams across the sea?
Read on:
Last Saturday, I found myself in Trident Booksellers, a cute coffee shop/bookstore in downtown Boulder, Colorado. Trident sits off the West End of the Pearl Street Mall, in the shadow of Boulder’s signature Flatirons—three iconic rocks that provide a slabby playground for the thousands of climbers that call the city home.
Even though the weather was beautiful, I wasn’t spending my weekend outside. I was alone, tapping away on my manuscript inside Trident. I spend a lot of days this way.
A man I know—a Bangladeshi Buddhist monk—tapped my table as he went to order a drink at the front. I smiled; happy to see him. He came back, Kombucha in hand. “We are studying out back, if you would like to join us.” I grinned a big grin, and said absolutely, I’d be out in a minute.
Out back, I found my monk with two friends who I had met once before, while rock climbing. They were all studying for their exams at Naropa University, a small Buddhist university. They asked me what I was doing. Writing my book, I responded. “Oh sweet, what’s it about?” one asked me. “Climbing?”
I laughed. “No, although you’d be forgiven for thinking that,” I said. “I am reading a book about climbing, though,” I said, brandishing a copy of Brendan Leonard’s new, bright-yellow book, Sixty Meters to Anywhere. “Have you guys been climbing since we last went?”
“No!” the woman says. “We’ve tried to get out with Meg a few times, but it hasn’t happened.”
“I’ve got a rope and draws with me,” I said. “I could take you.”
We worked for a few hours, and then skipped off at 4:30, rushing home to grab our climbing gear, reconvene, and squeeze in some evening laps before the daylight died in Boulder Canyon.
We cheers over a few post-climb ciders and a vegetarian pie at Backcountry Pizza. Glad I ran into you two, I say. That was fun.
“I just feel so good after I climb,” the woman says. “I really want to learn more!”
This sentiment is what lies at the center of Brendan Leonard’s memoir, Sixty Meters to Anywhere.
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